BARTOW - Polk County resident Karen Kelly found something eerily familiar about Hurricane Frances.
"This storm gives me the creeps," she said from her home in Alturas. "Just waiting and waiting."
Kelly remembers Hurricane Donna, another slow-moving storm that sat on top of Florida for hours. She was a schoolgirl when Donna hit in 1960. She remembers walking outside afterward to see houses torn from their foundations. Trees she had played in were gone.
"Frances has that same kind of feel," Kelly said. "That same kind of menacing feel."
Emergency management officials in Polk County agreed that Frances could cause more property damage than Charley, even if the wind speeds don't hit the highs of that hurricane.
Frances is expected to stay in Polk much longer than Charley, with tropical storm-force winds lasting as long as 14 hours.
Parts of Polk County are already a patchwork of repairs, thanks to Charley, which knocked out power to more than half of Polk County's 528,000 residents. Power grids had to be fixed. Some folks only recently got cable TV working again.
"The infrastructure is very much weakened because of Charley," said Sheriff Lawrence Crow.
The county is also saturated with water. The summer has brought more rain than normal, and Charley didn't help. Even before the rain bands from Frances began sweeping through the county Saturday, pools of water could be seen in back yards and farmers' fields.
The Peace River, which runs south of Bartow, was overflowing. Frances could drop 6 to 8 inches of rain in the area, and more than double that in some isolated areas, emergency management officials said.
Another problem is all the debris Charley left behind. Homeowners near Bartow High School had collected the debris - trees, shingles, siding - into neat piles ready for pick up.
"That looks like it was a waste of time," said Bartow resident Brad Longing. "Frances is just going to make a mess of it over again."
Max Gregory was throwing some clothes, beer and photos into the back of his Ford F150 pickup Saturday afternoon. He was one of about 73,000 Polk residents who live in mobile homes, some of the most vulnerable structures in a hurricane. After seeing the damage wreaked by Charley, he wasn't sticking around.
"I have enough beer for my friends in St. Pete," he said. "I'm sure they'll let me bunk down there."
Pinellas 
